By Maglorious Mwansa
It is said that when one plays a role so well that you begin to hate them, then you would have known just how incredibly talented they are. This is the case of the most accomplished and well sought after veteran actress, Patience Ozokwor. She is popularly known as Mama G to the screen lovers. Growing up those days almost every household was acquainted to Nigerian movies just to watch Mama G, a TV figure that has dominated screens for over 25 years.
I really started watching Mama G when I was in my second grade, that was in 2002. And 90% of her movies I watched, she acted either as an evil stepmother, an evil mother in-law, an evil wife, a witch, and so on and so forth. She executed all her roles with so much brilliance and with absolute certainty to a point where one would actually hate her in real life. All the movies I have watched of her, I think only in one have I seen her with a good heart.
Patience Ozokwor was born in Amaobo village in Ngwo, Enugu State in Nigeria. She then attended Abimbolo Gibson Memorial School in Lagos and later joined Methodist Girls School in Yaba before relocating back to Enugu due to civil war in Nigeria.
When she completed her high school education, she then attended Afikpo Teachers Training College; then the institute of Management and Technology in Enugu. She studied Fine and Applied Arts. Upon completion of her tertiary education, she worked as a teacher for quite some time before she decided to branch into broadcasting, then acting. Before Mama G went mainstream as a professional actress, Patience was already featuring in soap operas and radio dramas.
After graduating from college, Patience Ozokwor taught for four years before venturing into broadcasting industry. She was later hired by the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, as a reporter. At the corporation, she participated in radio drama and other entertainment activities on several occasions.
Patience Ozokwor was forced to be married at the age of 19 years to a man she barely knew. Nevertheless, according to her, the arranged marriage turned out to be successful, and together with her husband, they were fortunate and blessed to have three beautiful children.
Her husband was a mechanical engineer that worked in Enugu as a civil servant. Unfortunately, he passed on in 2000 after battling an illness for 15years and since then, she has never married again. Unlike in movies, Patience in real life is an amazing and kind hearted woman, and her kindness has been evidently seen in the fact that she has three biological children and she decided to adopt five more which brings the total to eight.
She has featured in over a hundred movies; notable movies like 2 Rats, Mama G in America, Blood sister, Torn apart, Submission, Ukwa, to only mention but a few. She jokingly said she has acted as a mother to almost every famous actress and actor in Nigeria except for only two: Pete Odochie and Olu Jacobs. Maybe it’s because they refused, hehehe.
She encountered the Lord Jesus Christ in the early 2016 and since then, she has been working as an evangelist, preaching in churches. Despite the many adversities she endured whilst nursing her husband who eventually died, Patience Ozokwor rose to the occasion into becoming one of the most accomplished and influential individuals In the Nollywood movie industry.
Mama Ozokwor was been known to be passionate about helping orphans and the needy and mentoring young people. In 2012 and 2013, she was nominated as the Best Supporting Actress at the 10th Africa Movie Academy Awards, which she won. In 2014, she was among the one hundred Nigerians honoured by the government while celebrating the northern and southern protectorates of the year. She also received several endorsements that contributed to her net worth. This is to say, being the brand ambassador of Gracia Planta Plantain Flour, Globacom, Iroko TV, and Glo in 2015 among many others. As of 2021, her estimated net worth is over 1million USD. We celebrate mama Patience Ozokwor for her excellent acting skills and for gracing our screens all these years.. She deserves to be celebrated because she has nurtured and natured so many now known celebrities and has contributed massively to the film industry in Nigeria and Africa at large.
